Berkeley couple combine dining and food fare at Foreign Cinema

Like dating, first impressions in the restaurant business can set the course for either a calamitous gastro-wreck or a sweet, swooning love story.

Meeting Berkeley couple Gayle Pirie and John Clark, at their San Francisco restaurant Foreign Cinema and its modestly sophisticated raw steel and wood surroundings, one could be stunned by their self-confessed attention to detail.

Or one could be intimidated by the flavor of locally sourced white corn popping out from under a Harissa Rubbed Llano Secco pork chop. Or enamored -- even struck temporarily blind -- by savory "Seasonal Fruit Pop Tarts," impeccably fried eggs and sugared, slow-cooked smoked bacon at a weekend brunch.

And then, there are the classic and independent movies, hand-picked by bartender and film guru Bryan Ranere and screened at dusk on the establishment's outdoor courtyard wall.

Equally classic cocktail pairings designed to reflect cinematic themes hoist the entire experience of sight, sound and taste to an ecstatic, sensual ... well, you can fill in that blank for yourself.

But if you get to know the two chefs by chatting with them for an hour in their Berkeley home, shortly after their children Magnus, 14, and Pearl, 7, have departed for school, you get a sublime story of craft, consideration and constant creation.

Pirie and Clark also deliver surprises, the bedrock of meals they suggest must "pop," to balance their restaurant's dynamic setting.

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Asked about their kids' eating habits, Pirie says, "It's just so willy-nilly, I can't predict it. The whole food thing just sucks, which sounds weird coming out of a chef's mouth," she admits.

But it doesn't sound weird, coming out of the mouth of a parent whose children once were pleased with pasta carbonara or cowboy stew and now require something akin to voodoo to please their palates. And it comes without rancor, from two food artists who hold to their people-friendly culinary principle of adventurousness.

"What's important is that you do not maintain a bizarre, limited food world," Pirie says. "When you enable them to be particular, it's not good for kids. Their brains are hungry and they get bored. If you foster (open-mindedness), they're able to function in different food categories."

Clark grew up eating his mother's casseroles and remembers shopping and coming home with "a Cadillac full of food." When he moved to college he barely knew how to prepare a potato, but started cooking for fun.

"Everyone around us was an artist, or working in a restaurant," he recalls. "We cooked crabs without directions, French toast for whoever would come over."

Improbably, the young, non-cooking Pirie landed by shear luck and what she calls a "dark, bohemian, mysterious move" at the former Vicolo Pizza, where she and Clark met.

They traveled together to San Francisco's Zuni Café, where they eventually became co-chefs de cuisine. After that, they developed an international restaurant consulting practice, Pirie served as Alice Waters' assistant at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and in 2001, they began earning ratings stars and accolades as chefs and owners of Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. In 2009, feeling the burn of desire from their customers for modern, more-than-a-dog sausages and non-hoity-toity accouterments, they opened Show Dogs on Market Street in San Francisco.

"We had staff with skills and interest in cured meats," Clark says, as if juggling two celebrated restaurants is easy.

Setting the record straight, Pirie says those viewing their success from afar could miss the intense effort behind the operation. "A chef is creating food he or she is dying to eat or needing to see on the menu. It's not selfish, it's to fulfill an inner drive," she says.

Resisting the media's push to find the "top rising 20-something chef dude," Pirie calls claims of male bias in the restaurant business "fodder for selling papers" and "machinations of periodicals." Following the imprint of women warriors in the field, she says there was a powerful woman in every cooking job she held.

Describing a meal as "a 90-minute vacation you're taking people on," Pirie responds to a list.

Timing and ingredients are paramount. Staff are the "number one resource." Customers are "the reason to be." Acoustics and lighting are critical and always a challenge. Communication must be constantly maintained and distill the chef's or owners' ideas, concepts, and practices--beyond the menu.

The end game, Pirie says, is a texturally rich, beautiful, sensory den of pleasing confluences. In other words, a sweet, swoon-y love story.

When a publisher supporting their vision can be found, they plan to add a Foreign Cinema cookbook to their previous offerings, "Country Egg, City Egg" (reprinted 2008) and "Bride and Groom" (2006).

foreign cinema

Foreign Cinema, owned and operated by Berkeley couple Gayle Pirie and John Clark, serves films and fine cuisine at 2534 Mission St. in San Francisco. Hours, menu and other details are online at www.foreigncinema.com or call 415-648-7600.